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by Queeninbroceliande



Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Endgame, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Post-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28251984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queeninbroceliande/pseuds/Queeninbroceliande
Summary: “But I’m asking you to let me in, knowing everything. Will you?”
Relationships: Beth Harmon & Benny Watts, Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Comments: 11
Kudos: 181





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**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! So, I've been binge-watching The Queen's Gambit and although I absolutely love the ending the way it is, with Beth being this strong female character who's not defined by her love-interests but by her accomplishments, I've wanted to explore furthermore and to give her and Benny the ending I thought the show suggested. 
> 
> English isn't my mother tongue - French is ! - but I wish you all a very good reading ! <3

Harry, Matt, Mike, and even Arthur and Hilton had all long been gone when Benny heard a knock on the door. It was a light noise, almost shy, and he knew it couldn’t be the boys for they were always so loud and cheerful. He frowned, and wondered if Cleo was back in the city, but he’d yelled so hard after her when he heard from Arthur and Hilton what had truly happened in Paris that he doubted she would ever come back.

Benny pulled himself out of the seat he was laying in reading _Modern Chess Openings_ , jumped the two steps that separated him from the door and opened it widely to discover an illuminated, all dressed in white Beth Harmon, except for the luggage she was carrying in her right hand.

“Beth.”

Townes had told them all she’d be back in the United-States of America that very day, but having defeated Borgov, Beth had invitations and obligations throughout the entire country, and her home was in Kentucky, not in some New-York basement he told her to never call again.

“Aren’t you supposed to be with the President?” he asked, a hand on the door handle, the other on his hips.

“I delay him.”

“The President of America?”

“Yes”, said she and only she would say with such confidence and innocence at the same time.

“To see me?”

He made a slight move on his left while speaking, allowing her to enter, but she stared at him with her big brown eyes and dropped her suitcase before saying:

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“On the doorstep?”

“I think you’d like to know before you let me in.”

“Go on, then.”

“When I was 9, my biological mother killed herself. She tried to have my father to take care of me but he refused. So she purposely crashed our car in an attempt to kill us both and last said to me that I should close my eyes. But I survived.”

She took a breath, and he realized he had forgotten to breathe too, mesmerized by her words, her move he failed to anticipate. He’d failed to anticipate a lot of her chess moves since Ohio. He thought he could read her though. Her feelings, her behavior. He thought he understood. Yet here she was, the woman who’d built concrete walls between the world and herself, entrusting her biggest wound to the man she fled after Paris.

“I ended up in an orphanage called the Methuen Home for girls. There, they used to give us daily tranquilizer pills which quickly turned out into an addiction for me. But I met Mr. Shaibel, the building’s custodian.”

He’d read about William Shaibel in _Time_. The magazine was on the table, along with a chessboard, a huge cup of coffee, a smiling Beth on the front page of _Chess Review_ and even the _Herald_ from Lexington.

“He taught me chess. And I saved the pills for the night, because, when I took the pills, I could visualize the chessboard and the pieces on the ceiling. I became very strong, very fast. Then, the state passed a law outlawing the use of tranquilizers on children, and I began suffer from withdrawal. I tried to steal a jar of pills while in need. But I ate too much of the pills and made my first overdose at 9.”

He knew she had a past. He knew she was an orphan. He knew she was an addict and he get that her addiction didn’t come from nowhere, that it wasn’t a choice she’d made, the same way their chess passion hadn’t ever been a choice but a gift they embraced the only way they know how to do: thoroughly.

Still, when she told him she’d rather be alone and high than in his arms, when she ignored the _I miss you_ he’d never conceded to anyone before her, he felt like she was choosing everything but him, like she was choosing to sink, like she was choosing to break his heart and her own self in the process.

Benny had already won big tournaments aged 9. He was traveling the country and the world already while a baby Elizabeth Harmon was denied a father and raised by a sick mother. Aged 9, Benny played chess in his head because he’d trained for years. Aged 9, Benny tasted alcohol for the first time at a family dinner and thought it was so bad he didn’t have another glass for another ten years. Aged 9, Beth made an overdose because she was drugged by the adults who were supposed to take care of her after her mother had committed suicide.

“I was punished. I couldn’t play chess for years. I was adopted by Alma and Allston Wheatley at 15. I had to lie and pretend to be 13 though. They took me and I had to leave Jolene who has been my first and only friend. Then I entered my first chess tournament because Mr. Shaibel sent the money to pay the fee. And I won. But, when I came back home, Allston had left Alma and we feared I’d have to go back to the orphanage.”

Frankly, he’d never been to Kentucky, and the state didn’t exactly make him dreamy. Benny liked the atmosphere of big cities. He liked the traffic, the noises, the lights, the people, he liked that there was a background. No total silence. No blanks. No emptiness.

The flat was silent and blank and empty since Beth had left, though. He wondered if Methuen was her silent and blank and empty place and Alma’s house in Lexington her reassuring square.

“So we lied again. And chess became our only source of income. Alma followed me around, helped me with everything, and loved me in a way no one has ever loved me before. She was an alcoholic though. And she had the same pills that I’d been given as a child. I was afraid I couldn’t win without the pills, and I needed to win because, I need to, and because Alma and I needed the money. So, I stole half of her pills, and I started drinking with her. But we were happy, until she suddenly died in Mexico City the very night Borgov defeated me for the first time.”

He opened his mouth, ready to say something, anything, but he couldn’t think of a single word that wouldn’t sound silly.

Besides, she didn’t look like she needed any comforting words. She was fixing his gaze, and her eyes were gently drawn with a black mascara that contrasted with her white coat and white pants and white hat. She was straight, impassive and nearly unreal, speaking to him like she was giving a random chess lesson, or answering the basic questions of a journalist.

“I went to what had been our home with her coffin and Allston said he’d leave the house to me. Harry came. He’d heard about Alma’s death. He offered to help me with my chess and truly ended up saving me from boredom, loneliness, then alcohol. But he developed feelings for me, feelings I didn’t share, so he left.”

Benny realized she’s going to talk about the National Championship because she didn’t attend any other tournament between Mexico City and Ohio.

He realized she’d been at grieve while defeating them all.

He realized he’d told her that she was drinking too much while her mother had died for the second fucking time.

He realized he’d never _asked_.

_How are you? Who are you?_

He realized than _orphan_ was just a word and the reality it covered and he ignored was a huge, massive, incompressible pain she thought she found an escape from aged 9 only to be drowned into more darkness.

“I won against you. Became the National Champion. And you let me enter your world. This time, I felt like I was the one having unrequited feelings. But I’ve been left behind by basically everyone I’ve ever loved, so I figured I’d rather be the one who left than the one who’s left and I went to Paris without telling you how I felt.”

Benny’s anger had totally softened and he had to press his lips very hard to let her speak, to let her deliver her speech.

It was tough, because he wanted to tell her that her feelings had never been unrequited, he wanted to tell her he sincerely thought he was helping her while talking about chess that night they had sex for the first time – that he’d never wanted someone _who wasn’t him_ to defeat Borgov so badly – and he wanted to tell her than he was the one who begged her to come to him, the one who said _I miss you_ , the one who made the first move and this big gesture that costed him hundreds of dollars.

He stayed silent though, mostly because Beth started to flinch. It was nearly imperceptible but he did knew her after all. She was blinking faster. She went with tight lips. She had to breathe out, and in, and out, and in again before continuing:

“You did nothing but help me for weeks, and most importantly you made me feel like I belonged. I’ve never felt like I belong since Alma’s death. Somehow, your tiny, gloomy, shabby flat became home to me. Then it took all but one drink for me to throw it all away. I thought you’d despise me. I thought you’d hate me. _I_ despised me and _I_ hated me and _I_ felt so humiliated. I knew you would have helped me staying sober but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to face what I’ve done and what I’ve felt. I wanted to escape. I wanted to forget. I wanted to be so drunk I’d forget everything. But you wouldn’t have left me, and facing your disappointment while dealing with mine, it would have absolutely destroyed me.”

Benny understood what sort of a game Beth was playing when a single tear ran down her pale face.

He understood her at last.

She was a little girl when her addictions started, a girl with an astonishing talent and an incredible strength and more courage than anyone and even she could possibly imagine, but a little girl. Beth wouldn’t ever heal. She wouldn’t ever be cured from the pills and the taste of alcohol.

She would always want to drug when she’d have a loss, when she’d have a down, when she’d be scared and she would always be scared to be abandoned.

“I absolutely destroyed myself anyway. I drank. And took the pills. And smoke a dozen joints. One day, I was so wasted I fell on the living room table, hit my head, and passed out. I wasn’t preparing Moscow. I wasn’t preparing anything anymore but my future, inevitable and predictable premature death.”

Overdosed at 9. _Washed up by the age of 21._

Benny had already won the US Junior Championship at 9. He’d won the World Junior Chess Championship and several titles of US Champion by the age of 21.

Beth didn’t choose drinking over him – it actually never was about him.

She chose dying instead of living.

She chose sinking because she felt too tired to escape and to lonely to be helped.

“But Jolene came by. She found me in a thousand pieces and helped me to fix the game because it’s how I work. I may be a loner, the truth is, though, I’ve never been better than with Jolene, with Alma, with Harry, with Townes in Moscow. With you. No one taught me how to take care of myself. I’m just a survivor. So, Jolene sent me to Russia, somehow sober. Townes met me for the final. I did well but I still wanted to drink, and I still wanted to take the fucking pills, until you called and everything brightened.”

She brightened too, on his doorstep. The night had fallen quite a long time ago and the lights in the stairs had been turned off. Beth and Benny were only enlightened by the lamp he lit while reading his book before she knocked.

She wasn’t crying anymore, in fact her voice only slightly trembled when she lost a single tear, and she recomposed herself the way he’d seen her did ever since her defeat in Las Vegas.

She wasn’t crying, in fact she was almost smiling, faintly, like she herself couldn’t believe what she was about to _check_ :

“I was sober when I beat you and Arthur and Hilton. I was sober when I beat everyone but Borgov in Paris. I was sober when I beat them all in Moscow. I was sober, when Borgov made a move none of us had excepted, and I looked up to the ceiling, and the chessboard appeared with all the pieces we had left and all the combinations I had to win. You told me back in Ohio that you could play in your head. I’ve always thought I could only do it thanks to the pills. It felt like this until I heard your voice.”

He frowned, realizing she was playing with something in the pocket of her coat, and her voice was weakening again, and she was rocking from one foot to the other, but still, she let down the walls, let down her defenses to _mate_ :

“That’s what you did to me, Benny. I’m not asking you to fix me. It’s my job. And we’ve both figured out I’ll never be fixed anyway by now, don’t you think so?”

She knew he’d read her game and understood the moves she was implying. She also knew she could have been clearer, the way he was when he told her he missed her, but she was a chess player, currently the best in the world: there was no way she’d exposed herself entirely without a clue on his position.

“But I’m asking you to let me in, knowing everything. Will you?”

There was a confidence he really liked in her tone, even though he knew she wasn’t that confident at all when it came to relationships and, basically, anything that wasn’t chess or dresses – she’d literally just given him a whole historical explanation for these confidence issues.

Benny chose a clearly softer tone and it was on purpose. He ran a hand through his hair, smiled just enough to draw dimples of his cheeks, because he didn’t want it to sound like he really was angry.

“You hurt me.”

“I know.”

“I hurt you too.”

“Not on purpose.”

“We’ll be hurt again.”

“It’s highly probable.”

“Will you stay? Or will you run away?”

Beth gasped. He opened the door widely and it helped her to catch one’s breath. She now was beating on the stairs with her left leg and turning and returning her something in her right pocket. She slowly parted her red lips and waited for Benny to finish his sequence.

“I’m asking you: are you ready to be in?”

“I am.”

And she eventually pulled her hand out of her coat to unveil a delicate, wooden chess piece.

A black king in her white glove.

Beth didn’t have to tell Benny she’d been given the chessman by Borgov at the end of their historical game. He knew it the moment she took his hand in hers and let the king slip between his soft fingers.

He knew how important it was, not because it used to be Borgov’s – she’ll defeat him again and now they both knew it – but because it was the piece which freed her.

He also knew that any other chess player would have kept the chessman forever as a trophy. Hell, he would certainly have kept it. Beth wasn’t giving him a random piece she could have found in the first game store: she was giving him a part of her victory, her trust, a ticket to her world, her desire to be in with him and forever, her love.

By giving him the black wooden king Beth was speaking to Benny in a language of their own and he felt like he belonged and she felt like she belonged and this feeling belonged to them only.

It was he who pressed his lips against hers, and her who threw herself in his reassuring arms, and he or her or the contrary who carried her in, closed the door, embraced and kissed and kissed and dropped all the barriers.

“Benny.”

He’d found her cheeks were wet while touching her face with his hands but even though her eyes were full of tears, he only saw strength and determination when he overlooked her.

“I truly am so sorry.”

“I know,” he answered with a kiss on her forehead.

“And I’ve missed you.”

He wiped her tears with his thumb and placed his hands on both of her cheeks and breathed out and breathed in before he spoke.

“Beth.”

“Yes?”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“I swear to you I’m not thinking about chess right now.”

“Then what?”

Beth had taken off her coat in their hurry to kiss and touch and love. She had a pinker complexion, her sweater pulled up to her chest and a shoe removed but she still had her bonnet on her red curls. Benny readjusted it on her head and grabbed a lock of her hair in his hand that was holding the black king while he said:

“Then congrats, Elizabeth Harmon. For being such a strong woman. A wonderful chess player, yes, the better. An inspiring model. A storm-braver and an anchor. A friend, a lover. Congrats. For being a Queen, really. You’re everything and even more.”

She was an orphan, an addict, an alcoholic, she was a Champion, a daughter, a friend, a family, a hero, a character, a lover, a chess player, a woman.

 _And even more_ she was home.

She was home to Benny and she was ready.

She’d have to go to Washington. She’d have to tour with the Federation. She’d want to see Jolene in Kentucky. She’d want to go back to Lexington where Alma loved her and offered her a very first home. They’d have to choose between New-York and her home town. They’d have to choose their next steps, their next games, their future together and their carriers, their blossoming.

But they spoke a language of their own and that night, when they didn’t have sex but made love, Beth felt like home was wherever Benny’s warm arms circled her body and he certainly felt the same for he proposed a road trip to Kentucky before she closed her eyes and buried her face in the back of his neck – the king was on the nightstand and the queen’s cap laid on top of him and the world belonged to them.


End file.
